C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\lab12-we.htm

	SOIL ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS, COST, AND PUBLIC INTERVENTION: FACTORS THAT DRIVE SOIL REMEDIATION Introduction Thus far in the course, you have dealt with investigations into relatively undisturbed soils in forest ecosystems or in agricultural settings. However, upon graduating from ESF many of you will find employment with environmental and engineering firms that deal with soils in industrial settings, or soils that have been severely impacted by mining operations or urban development. In many of these instances, contamination of the soil by industrial pollutants is common. In these cases, you will often be required to clean up the site to levels that are acceptable to the local (and in most cases federal) regulating agencies, while keeping your client (financially) happy. You will be asked to tread the fine line between using the best technology for the lowest cost. In the event that pollution is at a minimum, the physical properties of the soil may have been destroyed (e.g. compaction, top soil lost or removed). In this case, your challenge will be to reclaim the site to its previous condition - a condition that will support native vegetation and wildlife. As part of this exercise, you will be asked to complete problems from three real world soil reclamation projects: (1) Remediation of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil at a electricity substation in Wyoming, (2) soil reclamation at a remote canyon in southeastern Utah impacted by coal mining, and (3) the disposal of a resin sludge from a wood products treatment facility in Oregon. The clean up, or remediation, of contaminated soil is implemented under two sets of Federal regulations (I) the Comprehensive Environmental Compensation and Liabilities Act or Superfund (CERCLA), and (ii) the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) . The CERCLA legislation (pronounced sir-cla) provides a Federal and public trust fund (Superfund) to clean up abandoned or uncontrolled sites. At Superfund sites, the responsible parties either have failed to act to clean up directives, or cannot be identified or located. Under CERCLA, EPA also has the authority to reclaim costs from financially viable individuals and companies once a response action has been completed. The RCRA legislation (pronounced rick-rah) gave the EPA authority to control hazardous substances from the "cradle-to-the-grave". Under RCRA, the federal government developed transportation, treatment, and storage guidelines as well as cleanup standards for hazardous wastes. A critical difference between the two pieces of legislation is that RCRA addresses active and future facilities, while CERCLA applies to historical or abandoned sites. Both Superfund and RCRA have been modified since inception in the early 1970s, and have been driving forces behind the remediation of contaminated soil. Included in the 1984 amendments to RCRA were changes in the land disposal practices of hazardous wastes - essentially a list of hazardous wastes that could no longer be land filled without treatment to below some critical concentration level. In most instances, you will also have to work with many state and local ordinances that are modeled after the Federal regulations. State and local laws, where applicable, will always be as or more stringent than the Federal regulations, never less strict. Soil remediation has evolved from the standard treatment of landfilling (excavation, hauling, and disposal) of the 1970s to on site and in situ treatment alternatives utilizing bacteria, fungi, and thermal and chemical treatments to decontaminate the soil. These changes have been driven by a number of factors: regulatory change (e.g. RCRA amendments) cost of the soil cleanup technology public perception and intervention. Other important factors include; the chemistry of the contaminant, the physico-chemical conditions of the soil at the site, and whether groundwater has been impacted. These will be discussed in more detail in your lab manual. Regulatory Change Politics Most of the major pieces of environmental legislation have been signed into law in even numbered calendar years. Additionally, the general regulatory climate fluctuates with a four to eight year periodicity. Have you ever wondered why? Yes, it is the political pendulum swinging back and forth between the environment-friendly Democrats, and the business-friendly Republicans. As the climate swings to more rigorous enforcement and enactment, the various states move into compliance. However, it is never quite that simple, and the political inertia at the federal level (as new politicians take a while to gain some clout) and state level, results in a regulatory climate that is never quite in sync (federal vs state, and government in general with the public). This is frustrating to environmental companies, as they often work with local regulators on a day-to-day basis, but are ultimately responsible to their client for complying with federal regulations. These nuances aside, there has been a trend in the last 25 years, potentially halted by the current Republican Congress, to the development of stricter environmental regulations. Technology The tightening of compliance has resulted in the rapid evolution of environmental technologies that can attain higher clean up standards. These changes can be illustrated by the examples of dioxin and total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH). Under the cradle-to-grave policy implemented in the 1984 amendments to RCRA, a company that manufactures a chemical, or generates a waste byproduct, is responsible for it until disposal. Even then, they retain liability for as long as the chemical remains viable, or undecomposed. So, company ABC may be liable for cleaning up contaminated soil that results from a leak at a hazardous waste landfill many years after they disposed of their waste. This is why incineration, which results in complete breakdown of the chemical, has become popular. However, incineration has a tremendously high treatment cost per unit of contaminated soil due to transportation, and energy costs to burn the waste. Additionally, and we know this from a local example of a tire incinerator immediately north of Onondaga Lake, not only is incineration unpopular, but many local and state ordinances forbid potentially toxic material from crossing county or state boundaries. In fact, the USA, in spite of its free trade agreement with Canada, will not permit polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated soil to cross the international border. In addition to the high cost of incinerating dioxin-contaminated soil, the burning soil produces more dioxins, most of which are removed by scrubbers in smoke stacks. However, the risk, and it is a very small risk, that some dioxin will be emitted by smoke stacks has forced some companies to consider on site and in situ remediation. The general trend in stricter environmental regulations has been paralleled by an increase in so-called green technologies. These include harnessing naturally occurring organisms like bacteria and fungi to bioremediate contaminated soil and water. Not only are these green alternatives attractive as public relations strategies for the violators, but many regulating agencies will give preferential treatment to companies using these technologies. For example, at a pesticide-contaminated site in California, EarthMax Engineering expedited soil cleanup, stalled for 10 years due to the State's distaste for the offsite landfill alternatives proposed, by proposing to use a fungal technology to remediate the soil on site. Not only did this shorten the regulatory process, but EarthMax also received funding from one of the state agencies to develop a demonstration phase of the cleanup. By proposing to use the fungal technology at a site in North Carolina, where the soil was contaminated with wood-treating chemicals, EarthMax obtained a waiver for some of the chemicals of concern, in particular dioxin. While dioxins were present in the soil at very low concentrations (<1.5 *10 9 ppm). EarthMax demonstrated, using a fate-toxicity model, that mobility of dioxin was severely reduced due to the high clay content and very low permeability of the soil. Using this approach, EarthMax showed that the effects to water users downstream of the site were minimal. Cost A general framework for remediation of contaminated sites from discovery to final disposal of the waste consists of a number of sequential stages for which there are associated costs. An example of the progression towards clean up is shown below: Determine the source of the contamination o conduct a preliminary site investigation Determine the extent of the contamination o collect soil and groundwater (environmental) samples o analyze environmental samples o analyze data Develop a remedial action plan (RAP) o determine clean up standards Determine remediation options o compute costs associated with various options Remediate the site o excavate the contaminated material o treat or dispose of the waste - transport waste to a landfill? - construct a landfill on site for disposal or treatment? Monitor the site to ensure that cleanup standards have been attained Retain long-term liability In the laboratory exercises, you will focus on costs associated with the latter three stages of the clean up in determining possible clean up alternatives. The increasing cost of the remediation is driven in part by improvements in clean up technologies which have been necessitated by stricter environmental regulations. As technologies have become more advanced, the cost of implementation, product development, licensing and marketing increases. These increased costs are borne by the users, your future clients. Additionally, the cost of disposal of soil contaminated with a particular chemical has increased as regulating agencies and researchers have learned more about the environmental impacts of the chemical, in terms of its cancer risk to humans, recalcitrance (i.e. ability to persist in the environment), and impact on aquatic and terrestrial flora and fauna. An estimate of costs associated with a number of remediation alternatives of soils contaminated with certain chemicals is included in your laboratory manual. In completing the laboratory exercise, you are asked to consider a number of different disposal options. In some cases, the choice of disposal options is constrained by regulatory considerations. However, in the case of disposal of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, a relatively innocuous and short-lived contaminant, there are a number of options open to you - here cost together with future land use, become the determining factors. A general approach to determining which remediation alternative is the best is to determine the total volume of material to be disposed. It then remains to consider the cost of each disposal option for each unique waste, including transportation (if appropriate), long-term monitoring, and potential liability costs. Public Intervention and Perception The public has historically become concerned regarding the location of landfills, containing municipal, industrial or hazardous wastes, in close proximity to their residences. The term "not-in-my-backyard" (NIMBY) has been coined to describe this fear and the action that often results from proposals to locate landfills near residential area. The NIMBY principle is alive and well in the US, despite the higher costs of waste disposal that results due to transport to remote landfills. The regulatory climate we operate in today has been shaped by the interaction between public interest groups and industrial influence. Despite the claim that they are self-regulating in terms of the generation of effluent, industry does not demand higher clean up standards. In fact, they industrial lobbyists are currently negotiating for relaxed environmental standards. Therefore, in many cases, the improvement of the regulatory framework is a testament to the public's concern for the environment. While still relatively short-term in extent, the intent of efforts by organizations like the Sierra Club, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), and the Wildlife Conservancy to name a few, appear to be to develop means of dealing with our environment and our waste products, that will ensure future generations will inhabit our planet. Examples of successful public participation in the decision making process include the proposed tire incineration project in Onondaga County, and coal mining on the Kapairowitz Plateau in Utah. Public concern over the generation of harmful byproducts of the tire incineration may result in a retraction of the construction permit, and could see alternative uses for the tires being proposed. The designation by Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, of a large tract of land in Utah as a wilderness area in 1996, was spearheaded by public interest groups including SUWA. The land had previously been proposed as a coal mining area, and preliminary environmental impact studies (EIS) indicated that the fragile ecosystems may be able to withstand coal mining given strict operational guidelines. As part of their strategy, SUWA focussed attention on adjacent areas that had been impacted by mining and showed poor recovery, in terms of revegetation and wildlife use, after extensive reclamation.

SOIL ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS

ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS, COST, AND PUBLIC INTERVENTION:

FACTORS THAT DRIVE SOIL REMEDIATION

Introduction

Thus far in the course, you have dealt with investigations into relatively undisturbed soils in forest ecosystems or in agricultural settings. However, upon graduating from ESF many of you will find employment with environmental and engineering firms that deal with soils in industrial settings, or soils that have been severely impacted by mining operations or urban development. In many of these instances, contamination of the soil by industrial pollutants is common. In these cases, you will often be required to clean up the site to levels that are acceptable to the local (and in most cases federal) regulating agencies, while keeping your client (financially) happy. You will be asked to tread the fine line between using the best technology for the lowest cost. In the event that pollution is at a minimum, the physical properties of the soil may have been destroyed (e.g. compaction, top soil lost or removed). In this case, your challenge will be to reclaim the site to its previous condition - a condition that will support native vegetation and wildlife. As part of this exercise, you will be asked to complete problems from three real world soil reclamation projects: (1) Remediation of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil at a electricity substation in Wyoming, (2) soil reclamation at a remote canyon in southeastern Utah impacted by coal mining, and (3) the disposal of a resin sludge from a wood products treatment facility in Oregon.

The clean up, or remediation, of contaminated soil is implemented under two sets of Federal regulations (I) the Comprehensive Environmental Compensation and Liabilities Act or Superfund (CERCLA), and (ii) the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) . The CERCLA legislation (pronounced sir-cla) provides a Federal and public trust fund (Superfund) to clean up abandoned or uncontrolled sites. At Superfund sites, the responsible parties either have failed to act to clean up directives, or cannot be identified or located. Under CERCLA, EPA also has the authority to reclaim costs from financially viable individuals and companies once a response action has been completed. The RCRA legislation (pronounced rick-rah) gave the EPA authority to control hazardous substances from the "cradle-to-the-grave". Under RCRA, the federal government developed transportation, treatment, and storage guidelines as well as cleanup standards for hazardous wastes. A critical difference between the two pieces of legislation is that RCRA addresses active and future facilities, while CERCLA applies to historical or abandoned sites. Both Superfund and RCRA have been modified since inception in the early 1970s, and have been driving forces behind the remediation of contaminated soil. Included in the 1984 amendments to RCRA were changes in the land disposal practices of hazardous wastes - essentially a list of hazardous wastes that could no longer be land filled without treatment to below some critical concentration level. In most instances, you will also have to work with many state and local ordinances that are modeled after the Federal regulations. State and local laws, where applicable, will always be as or more stringent than the Federal regulations, never less strict.

Soil remediation has evolved from the standard treatment of landfilling (excavation, hauling, and disposal) of the 1970s to on site and in situ treatment alternatives utilizing bacteria, fungi, and thermal and chemical treatments to decontaminate the soil. These changes have been driven by a number of factors:

regulatory change (e.g. RCRA amendments)

cost of the soil cleanup technology

public perception and intervention.

Other important factors include; the chemistry of the contaminant, the physico-chemical conditions of the soil at the site, and whether groundwater has been impacted. These will be discussed in more detail in your lab manual.

Regulatory Change
Politics
Most of the major pieces of environmental legislation have been signed into law in even numbered calendar years. Additionally, the general regulatory climate fluctuates with a four to eight year periodicity. Have you ever wondered why? Yes, it is the political pendulum swinging back and forth between the environment-friendly Democrats, and the business-friendly Republicans. As the climate swings to more rigorous enforcement and enactment, the various states move into compliance. However, it is never quite that simple, and the political inertia at the federal level (as new politicians take a while to gain some clout) and state level, results in a regulatory climate that is never quite in sync (federal vs state, and government in general with the public). This is frustrating to environmental companies, as they often work with local regulators on a day-to-day basis, but are ultimately responsible to their client for complying with federal regulations. These nuances aside, there has been a trend in the last 25 years, potentially halted by the current Republican Congress, to the development of stricter environmental regulations.

Technology
The tightening of compliance has resulted in the rapid evolution of environmental technologies that can attain higher clean up standards. These changes can be illustrated by the examples of dioxin and total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH). Under the cradle-to-grave policy implemented in the 1984 amendments to RCRA, a company that manufactures a chemical, or generates a waste byproduct, is responsible for it until disposal. Even then, they retain liability for as long as the chemical remains viable, or undecomposed. So, company ABC may be liable for cleaning up contaminated soil that results from a leak at a hazardous waste landfill many years after they disposed of their waste. This is why incineration, which results in complete breakdown of the chemical, has become popular. However, incineration has a tremendously high treatment cost per unit of contaminated soil due to transportation, and energy costs to burn the waste. Additionally, and we know this from a local example of a tire incinerator immediately north of Onondaga Lake, not only is incineration unpopular, but many local and state ordinances forbid potentially toxic material from crossing county or state boundaries. In fact, the USA, in spite of its free trade agreement with Canada, will not permit polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated soil to cross the international border. In addition to the high cost of incinerating dioxin-contaminated soil, the burning soil produces more dioxins, most of which are removed by scrubbers in smoke stacks. However, the risk, and it is a very small risk, that some dioxin will be emitted by smoke stacks has forced some companies to consider on site and in situ remediation. The general trend in stricter environmental regulations has been paralleled by an increase in so-called green technologies. These include harnessing naturally occurring organisms like bacteria and fungi to bioremediate contaminated soil and water. Not only are these green alternatives attractive as public relations strategies for the violators, but many regulating agencies will give preferential treatment to companies using these technologies. For example, at a pesticide-contaminated site in California, EarthMax Engineering expedited soil cleanup, stalled for 10 years due to the State's distaste for the offsite landfill alternatives proposed, by proposing to use a fungal technology to remediate the soil on site. Not only did this shorten the regulatory process, but EarthMax also received funding from one of the state agencies to develop a demonstration phase of the cleanup. By proposing to use the fungal technology at a site in North Carolina, where the soil was contaminated with wood-treating chemicals, EarthMax obtained a waiver for some of the chemicals of concern, in particular dioxin. While dioxins were present in the soil at very low concentrations (<1.5 *10 9 ppm). EarthMax demonstrated, using a fate-toxicity model, that mobility of dioxin was severely reduced due to the high clay content and very low permeability of the soil. Using this approach, EarthMax showed that the effects to water users downstream of the site were minimal.

Cost
A general framework for remediation of contaminated sites from discovery to final disposal of the waste consists of a number of sequential stages for which there are associated costs. An example of the progression towards clean up is shown below:

Determine the source of the contamination
o conduct a preliminary site investigation

Determine the extent of the contamination
o collect soil and groundwater (environmental) samples
o analyze environmental samples
o analyze data

Develop a remedial action plan (RAP)
o determine clean up standards

Determine remediation options
o compute costs associated with various options

Remediate the site
o excavate the contaminated material
o treat or dispose of the waste
- transport waste to a landfill?
- construct a landfill on site for disposal or treatment?

Monitor the site to ensure that cleanup standards have been attained

Retain long-term liability

In the laboratory exercises, you will focus on costs associated with the latter three stages of the clean up in determining possible clean up alternatives.

The increasing cost of the remediation is driven in part by improvements in clean up technologies which have been necessitated by stricter environmental regulations. As technologies have become more advanced, the cost of implementation, product development, licensing and marketing increases. These increased costs are borne by the users, your future clients. Additionally, the cost of disposal of soil contaminated with a particular chemical has increased as regulating agencies and researchers have learned more about the environmental impacts of the chemical, in terms of its cancer risk to humans, recalcitrance (i.e. ability to persist in the environment), and impact on aquatic and terrestrial flora and fauna. An estimate of costs associated with a number of remediation alternatives of soils contaminated with certain chemicals is included in your laboratory manual.

In completing the laboratory exercise, you are asked to consider a number of different disposal options. In some cases, the choice of disposal options is constrained by regulatory considerations. However, in the case of disposal of hydrocarbon-contaminated soil, a relatively innocuous and short-lived contaminant, there are a number of options open to you - here cost together with future land use, become the determining factors. A general approach to determining which remediation alternative is the best is to determine the total volume of material to be disposed. It then remains to consider the cost of each disposal option for each unique waste, including transportation (if appropriate), long-term monitoring, and potential liability costs.

Public Intervention and Perception
The public has historically become concerned regarding the location of landfills, containing municipal, industrial or hazardous wastes, in close proximity to their residences. The term "not-in-my-backyard" (NIMBY) has been coined to describe this fear and the action that often results from proposals to locate landfills near residential area. The NIMBY principle is alive and well in the US, despite the higher costs of waste disposal that results due to transport to remote landfills. The regulatory climate we operate in today has been shaped by the interaction between public interest groups and industrial influence.

Despite the claim that they are self-regulating in terms of the generation of effluent, industry does not demand higher clean up standards. In fact, they industrial lobbyists are currently negotiating for relaxed environmental standards. Therefore, in many cases, the improvement of the regulatory framework is a testament to the public's concern for the environment. While still relatively short-term in extent, the intent of efforts by organizations like the Sierra Club, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), and the Wildlife Conservancy to name a few, appear to be to develop means of dealing with our environment and our waste products, that will ensure future generations will inhabit our planet. Examples of successful public participation in the decision making process include the proposed tire incineration project in Onondaga County, and coal mining on the Kapairowitz Plateau in Utah. Public concern over the generation of harmful byproducts of the tire incineration may result in a retraction of the construction permit, and could see alternative uses for the tires being proposed. The designation by Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, of a large tract of land in Utah as a wilderness area in 1996, was spearheaded by public interest groups including SUWA. The land had previously been proposed as a coal mining area, and preliminary environmental impact studies (EIS) indicated that the fragile ecosystems may be able to withstand coal mining given strict operational guidelines. As part of their strategy, SUWA focussed attention on adjacent areas that had been impacted by mining and showed poor recovery, in terms of revegetation and wildlife use, after extensive reclamation.

Your Link To The EPA Site